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A former San Jose councilmember is posturing as an elected official on social media, despite multiple demands by the city to turn over these official accounts.

Former Councilmember Maya Esparza is holding the District 7 social media accounts and associated websites hostage, even as the city attorney, manager, clerk and current Councilmember Bien Doan have requested she relinquish the login information. Esparza still represents herself as the district’s councilmember on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, according to screenshots of the accounts taken by San José Spotlight. Esparza, who served one term starting in 2018, lost her reelection campaign to Doan last year.

Doan said the issue has made transitioning into the role difficult because it hinders his ability to reach constituents, especially in urgent situations like the January floods. He wants to change city policy to ensure it never happens again.

“It almost feels revengeful,” Doan told San José Spotlight. “I would expect the outgoing councilmember would be cooperative. When we come to the office our goal is to take care of our residents, understand their needs and concerns and communicate with them. To not get that was disheartening.”

Doan plans to submit a memo to the council this week to mandate that official councilmember social media and mailing list accounts be tied to a “.gov” email and be owned by the city. He wants to ensure these are the primary accounts used to disseminate information from current leaders. Doan said he also wants the city to purchase council district website domains so when turnover happens, the city can determine who manages them.

Esparza did not respond to requests for comment.

“You have to ask, why is the previous councilmember claiming she is still the councilmember?” Doan said. “To me, that’s you breaking a lot of laws. You are impersonating a public representative—and there should be some type of consequences.”

Doan said the animus relationship with Esparza started immediately after the election was certified. He said he reached out to Esparza on several occasions for a transition meeting – customary when there is a change in a councilmember – but Esparza refused.

When he took office in January, Doan said there were no resources, data or old memos to reference—the office was empty. Doan said even some city office equipment was missing. While there were some remaining district funds, the mailing lists, social media accounts and even the “SJDistrict7.com” domain were not accessible to him.

In 2020, Esparza purchased the “SJDistrict7.com” domain using personal funds—despite the domain belonging to the city before she was a councilmember. City Clerk Toni Taber said she asked Esparza to turn it over, but Esparza said no.

This was not the first issue Taber experienced with Esparza refusing a city request. Taber said she asked all council offices for their mailing lists in October 2022 and Esparza failed to provide hers. And for several months, the District 7 office couldn’t access the official mailing list containing resident contacts because Esparza refused to supply the password.

Eventually Taber was able to get the login information for the “iConstituents” database by asking the private company for access after Esparza did not provide login information.

But Esparza also failed to mention to Taber that she had another mailing list associated with the city’s email in Mailchimp, a marketing company that allows users to send email blasts. When the District 7 office discovered this additional mailing list, they requested the login information from Esparza. The IT department finally retrieved the account since it used a city email, according to Doan’s office.

Taber believes if Doan’s digital property policy memo comes before the San Jose City Council, it will spark an important discussion among leaders.

“Part of the discussion has to be how do (these new policies) get enforced,” Taber told San José Spotlight. “The transition (of councilmembers) usually goes pretty okay, but every once in a while you get a couple that just don’t communicate.”

The city attorney is also involved. Because Esparza still claims to be the current councilmember on Facebook, Doan has been unable to create his own councilmember account. Any time Doan tries, he said he gets wrongfully flagged by Facebook for “impersonating a government official.” The city attorney sent a letter to Facebook demanding access to the account on Aug. 28, but has not heard back.

While Esparza hasn’t posted from Instagram, where she lists herself as the current councilmember, she has posted on LinkedIn in the last six months—and has failed to change her title there, too. She did however change her X, formerly known as Twitter, account to say “former councilmember.”

Jonathan Fleming, Doan’s deputy chief of staff, said the city is exploring all avenues to remedy this.

“There’s no reason for a previous councilmember to do this,” Doan said. “I hope that our city and future council and mayor will always have this wonderful transition where it’s all about our community and not about ourselves.”

Contact Jana Kadah at jana@sanjosespotlight.com or @Jana_Kadah on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Every team has questions going into the upcoming season. Big questions. They’re questions where the answers have massive implications for how the season will play out, for better or worse.

Is this young stud ready to take the next step; what can this veteran accomplish after returning from injury; can this team improve defensively to make the playoffs — stuff like that? They’re questions that offer a wide range of possible outcomes that can really swing a team’s fortunes in one direction or the other.

Every team has one. Every team except, well, the San Jose Sharks. We all know San Jose is going to be really bad and there isn’t really an intriguing answer to how that might change. Instead, the big question is analyzing just how dire this situation is. That begins with what’s left of the defense corps in the wake of the Erik Karlsson trade.

Mario Ferraro, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Matt Benning, Jan Rutta, Radim Simek, Kyle Burroughs, Jacob MacDonald. Seriously, does it get uglier than that? That’s our question because it’s hard to recall a more hopeless group of NHL defenders than this.

GO DEEPER

San Jose Sharks 2023-24 season preview

To be fair, that group isn’t completely awful defensively. They rank 20th by projected Defensive Rating at minus-two which might be the strongest thing about the Sharks positionally this season, sadly enough. To be less fair, it’s their job as safe no-nonsense defenders. That job gets so much harder if no one can step up with the puck and that’s exactly where this group really suffers.

Here’s the skinny. Just one of those seven, Benning, scored at a pace higher than 20 points last season and he had just 24 points in 77 games. The bar is lower than this team’s playoff chances and they still can’t clear it. That might change with more offensive touches this season with Karlsson gone, but it’s difficult to buy that when none of the six even have the faintest history of any offensive upside.

Of the 44 combined seasons of NHL hockey from the seven defenders, only four — all by Vlasic, back when he was still good — saw production at a 30-point pace or better. This year we have Ferraro projected to lead the Sharks blue line with 30.4 points, but that’s only if he’s force-fed power play time. Even then it’s dicey as the Sharks could (and arguably should) just use five forwards on the top unit instead.

Either way, 29 of 32 teams have at least one 45-point defenseman on their roster with the Flyers and Wild at least having someone who could hit 35-to-40. The average top-scoring defenseman in the league outside of San Jose is projected to pace for 57.6 points, nearly double San Jose’s best. Since scoring began to go up in 2017-18 there has been only one team without a defenseman pacing at 30 points or higher for the year: the 2017-18 Oilers (which feels impossible with Connor McDavid on your team, but that’s a story for another day).

Offensively the Sharks are utterly anemic with a projected Offensive Rating of minus-25 from the blue line, somehow 11 goals worse than the next worst team. They have no one who can capably move the puck in any zone and that’s going to make life extremely difficult for their already poor group of forwards. And keep in mind those projected ratings were mostly with Karlsson on the team — there’s a chance things get even worse as the context changes.

The Sharks may be solid enough defensively from the back end, but they are so unbelievably weak with the puck on their sticks it won’t matter.

Does that all give San Jose the worst blue line in recent memory? We checked what each team’s blue line was projected for going back to the 2010-11 season (the first year the model can reasonably go back to) and San Jose is only the seventh team to have a blue line worth minus-20 goals or worse. The Sharks are also only the second to have an Offensive Rating at minus-20 or lower. In both regards, they have the worst blue line on record.

Worst defense groups since 2010-11

What hurts most is that the other six teams had at least one above-average defenseman leading the charge, one top-four option or better. If not that, they at least had hope with young players ready to break out, a highly touted rookie, or a stud prospect on the horizon. The Sharks have none of that. And no, Ferraro doesn’t count just because he plays a million minutes on a bad team.

Last year’s Coyotes had Jakob Chychrun and Shayne Gostisbehere. The 2018-19 Canucks had Alex Edler with Quinn Hughes on the horizon. The 2018-19 Senators had the hope of Thomas Chabot (who scored 55 points that season). The 2014-15 Flyers had Mark Streit. The 2014-15 Sabres had Josh Gorges and, yes, the misguided hope of Rasmus Ristolainen. The 2014-15 Oilers had Oscar Klefbom, Justin Schultz, and Jeff Petry — even if all of them were not that good yet.

The Sharks have no one in that vein — they have six third-pairing defensemen or worse. This is the result of that: The worst blue line we’ve seen in at least a decade and maybe more. It’s going to be a long season.

(Photo of Marc-Edouard Vlasic: Darren Yamashita / USA Today)

SAN JOSE, Calif. - The winter of 2017 in the Bay Area yielded historic rainfall and unforgettable images. Flooding of the Coyote Creek in San Jose put parts of the city under feet of water.

"California is prone to floods, fires, earthquakes. We can predict that we will be afflicted by these kinds of natural disasters again," said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

On September 6, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) designated two areas in San Jose as "Community Disaster Resilience Zones." There are a total of seven such zones in the Bay Area, 51 in California, and over 500 nationally.

"What they’ve done is take a look at risk factors, 18 of them. Which areas are affected by previous disasters? What’s the socio-economic population within those areas? And how do we mitigate it?," explained Mark Neveau, a former FEMA federal coordinating officer.

FEMA is set to allocate more than $3 billion to these zones, enabling local communities to undertake mitigation efforts and reduce the risk and impact of natural disasters such as heatwaves, floods, fires, and earthquakes.

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An attorney and some of the clients she will represent are holding a news conference in San Jose on Thursday to discuss a lawsuit being filed against multiple local county and city agencies as a result of the Coyote Creek flood that damaged the area last year.

"I’m thrilled San Jose was chosen. And that the federal government is trying to get upstream of natural disasters," said Mahan.

Climate experts noted that climate change is a contributing factor, transforming infrequent events into more frequent catastrophes.

"One of the things we’ve seen worldwide this summer, is a lot of flooding rains, that have been made worse by climate change," said Dr. Alison Bridger, an atmospheric scientist at San Jose State University. "There’s an increase in extreme weather, worldwide. So what used to be a regular rain even now becomes a heavier rain event."

Officials pointed out that completed mitigation projects in other parts of the Bay Area have yielded positive results. San Jose's leaders are optimistic that the influx of federal funding will allow them to stay ahead of the unpredictable forces of nature.

"Let’s use that money to do something about that," said Bridger. Added Mahan, "We need to figure out how much money we have, and then design a sight-specific plan to think about how to best use those dollars, and how to make those neighborhoods more resilient to floods, wildfire risk and other natural disasters."

The mayor mentioned potential measures such as levee construction, vegetation management. The exact amount of FEMA funding allocated to San Jose will become more clear in the coming months.

Jesse Gary is a reporter based in the station's South Bay bureau. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter), @JesseKTVU and on Instagram, @jessegontv.

Zelica Rodriguez-Deams, manager for the Santa Clara County Office of Immigrant Relations, said a recent report shows the strengths, skills and expertise of immigrants who create businesses, pay taxes and enrich the region’s cultural fabric. Photo by Lorraine Gabbert.

Immigrants are one of Santa Clara County’s key economic drivers, bringing billions of dollars into the community.

Approximately 765,800 immigrants contributed $255 billion to the county’s gross domestic product in 2021, according to a recent report that reveals the significant role immigrants play in the region’s labor force, businesses and consumer spending.

New Americans in Santa Clara County, a report created by the American Immigration Council and Santa Clara County Office of Immigrant Relations, reports that 50.3% of the county’s business owners in 2021 were immigrants, even though they comprised 40.6% of the population. The report shows 42,000 immigrant entrepreneurs in the county generated $1.5 billion in income.

Maritza Maldonado, executive director of Amigos de Guadalupe, said since March she’s seen an influx of asylum seekers in her office, including more than 100 families. Maldonado wants residents to stand in solidarity with immigrants, support advocacy efforts for comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship, celebrate their contributions and vote.

“We know how much our immigrant community has contributed,” she told San José Spotlight, “but to actually have data that can legitimize it is really important. Now we have the facts.”

Zelica Rodriguez-Deams, manager for the county office of immigrant relations, told San José Spotlight a needs assessment specific to the immigrant community hasn’t been done in 23 years. She said the report shows the strengths, skills and expertise of immigrants who are building businesses, paying taxes and enriching the region’s cultural fabric. Rodriguez-Deams said the county is developing a welcoming and belonging plan for new immigrants and surveying existing communities to assess their needs from housing and education to language access and legal services.

Julie Ramirez, manager for Santa Clara County’s Division of Equity and Social Justice, said the study highlights the contributions of immigrants and the need to diversify services and make them accessible.

“We hope to demystify and counter the negative narrative that surrounds the stories of immigrants,” she told San José Spotlight. “They help make our community great.”

County Executive James Williams added that these residents help make the county a center for innovation, creativity and economic growth. He said the county stands up for immigrant rights through its policies and services and is the first county in the nation to provide health insurance for all children, regardless of immigration status. He said the county also leads the nation on sanctuary jurisdiction policy.

County Supervisor Otto Lee said the region is made up of different stories, backgrounds, cultures and families from around the world.

“Silicon Valley offered immigrants opportunity and hope,” Lee said, “and in return, these hard-working immigrants did more than their share contributing to the economic growth of the county, the Bay Area and beyond.”